Beijing Boom Tower

The Dynamic City Foundation describes Beijing Boom Tower by architect Neville Mars as an “inspiration against sprawl,” through which “an entirely new urban reality is being created.”

The Boom Tower, they say, is an example of “the market responding to all future demands: suburban living in the heart of China’s capital.” Which is interesting, because this is possibly the least suburban thing I’ve ever seen.

Be sure to dress colorfully.“Can the city withstand 15 more years of uncontrolled expansion?” they ask. “Can architecture even comprehend the scale of the urban problem? Can the mixed-use megastructure combat our segregating society?”Why the answer to these questions is a city within a city, constructed from what look like huge stacks of white film canisters plastered with corporate logos, is beyond me – but as a set for a science fiction film? Go for it.

At least it would attract a lot of tourists. If you want to learn more about the complex, you can actually watch this (often surreal) short film, wherein you will learn that Beijing Boom Tower… includes a driving range. Or just download this PDF, which contains an interview with project architect Neville Mars, including his thoughts about the desegregated garden-city towers of the future.

Related

9 thoughts on “Beijing Boom Tower”

Antithesis to Beijing Boom Town. Elizabeth Hickock’s Jell-o Francisco. Earthquake resistant and deliciously edible. The only corporate sponsorship comes from Jell-o, and there’s a Gelatin Valley busily producing millions of tons of colloidal gel. You have to dress in white in this city, and you can never lean against a wall.

Boom Tower uses a very holey structure for maximum window surfacing and minimum pity for people living with vertigo. What’s in those dark bottomless pits? Just streams of moving humans and products on conveyors? Speciated people with extra ears and no eyes? Sunlight never reaches down there, and most of the city is just wallowing in its own shadows. Like a landscape of whitewashed smokestacks or enormous albino lipstick tubes, you’d have to floodlight this city to make it livible, and every other floor would be a tanning salon to deter depression. Only the penthouse suites atop the uppermost rings get anything like a country boy’s sun quota.

Compost, prisons, or both. Sunny mirrors would do the trick, but you know some joker would rig up an outsized magnifying glass and melt the Tupperware structures. Building key structures with bioluminescent materials might help…

Maybe you could fill the Tupperware towers with that greenish glo-stick goo and make them a bit structurally unstable. When they buckled a bit, they would begin to glow, plastically. Voila! Darkness begone.

Pools of bioluminescent bacteria. Flowing through the walls. Instead of OnStar or GPS you just tell the bacteria where you need to go and they light the very path beneath your feet…

In addition to the driving range, then, you’d always have a place to store food. Inside TupperWalls. An architectural convenience not to be underestimated. You could microwave the walls themselves, cooking with the sun-mirrors. Ovenopolis.

In any case, if the towers weren’t all white this city might actually be tempting.